Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

240 / ANARCHISM
ery woman's heart rises quickly when combat stirs it up, particularly when combat
promises to lessen squalor and stinks less than a charnel house.
Calm down, men. We are not stupid enough to want to run things. Our taking
power would only make some kind of authority last longer; you men keep the power
instead, so that authority may wither away more quickly. I must add that even "more
quickly" will still be too long.
We women are disgusted, and further villainies only inspire us to act. We jeer a
little also. We jeer at the incredible sight of big shots, cheap punks, hoods, old men,
young men, scoundrels-all turned into idiots by accepting as truth a whole heap of
nonsensical ideas which have dominated the thinking of the human race. We jeer at
the sight of those male creatures judging women's intellects by weighing the brains
of women in their dirty paws.
Do men sense the rising tide of us women, famished for learning We ask only
this of the old world: the little knowledge that it has. All those men who wish to do
nothing are jealous of us. They are jealous of us because we want to take from the
world what is sweetest: knowledge and learning.
I have never understood why there was a sex whose intelligence people tried to
cripple as if there were already too much intelligence in the world. Little girls are
brought up in foolishness and are expressly disarmed so that men can deceive them
more easily. That is what men want. It is precisely as if someone threw you into the
water after having torbidden you to learn to swim or even after having tied your arms
and legs. It is all done under the pretext of preserving the innocence of little girls.
Men are happy to let a girl dream. And most of those dreams would not disturb
her as they do now if she knew them as simple questions of science. She would be in
fact more truly innocent then, for she could move calmly through visions which now
trouble her. Nothing that comes from science or nature would bother her. Does a
corpse disturb people who are used to the dissecting room When nature, living or
dead, appears to an educated woman, she does not blush. There is no mystery, for
mystery is destroyed when the cadaver is dissected. Nature and science are clean; the
veils that men throw over them are not .
.. . "Civilized" men prepare young girls to be deceived, and then make it a crime for
them to fall, but also make it almost an honour for the seducer. What an uproar when
men find an unruly animal in the flock! I wonder what would happen if the lamb no longer
wanted to be slaughtered. Most likely, men would slaughter them just the same,
whether or not they stretched their necks out for the knife. What difference does it
make The difference is that it is better not to stretch your neck out to your murderer.